Handwriting on Touchscreens

AlexH

AlexH

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Staffordshire, UK
I've noticed a few topics touch (unusually for me, no pun intended) on this. I'm looking at buying a laptop, but most are much heavier than I'd like. The 400ish grams I could save without a keyboard would be great when backpacking. I also need Photoshop ability. I've been considering a Surface Pro or Lenovo, with a pen.

Does anyone regularly handwrite on touchscreens? How do you find it? I was amazed how well the Surface Pro recognised messy handwriting in this video.

Ideally I'd want to write straight into Google Docs, but that doesn't seem possible. Is there a way of handwriting onto a screen, and it automatically being digitised into a particular format (such as standard manuscript)? It's a pain to write stuff, and then have to re-format it. Can you write onto the full screen with Scrivener? I'd like documents to be synced across devices, which I believe Scrivener does. Is it easy to edit/underline/bold words?

How small can you write on screens, while keeping it legible for the software? My stories tend to be 1000-2500 words, so nothing huge, but it'd be annoying if I had to keep 'okaying' writing every few sentences.

So many questions, thanks for any help! :)
 
I wouldn't recommend trying to handwriting onto a touchscreen. For some reason it's just not intuitive and the pen is usually very blunt, making writing awkward. (Personally I actually can't stand writing by hand. I'd basically be an illiterate imbecile if not for modern communication tools.)

Instead, for that application, I'd recommend a dedicated writing pad. There are several innovative products on the market right now that you can write on with pens that come much closer to emulating an actual pen, and they then transfer to the words to a computer or word file for you.
 
You can get some good pens, with fine-point 'nibs' on them. A little dearer, but still reasonable. Personally, find writing and drawing easier with them, but used to use a specially-designed art pad, which plugged into the laptop. Even then, writing recognition was patchy. Found it even more so with generic Windows and Android software. OneNote, in particular, struggled.

You can write, but the software often doesn't recognise words. Some programs don't even convert handwriting to text, but only keep it as (in effect) a picture, of handwritten notes. If you do find a way of writing direct to Google Docs, let us know. SurfacePro is a bit pricey.
 
I agree with the above. I handwrite into Scrivener with my iPad pro + Apple pencil, but that only works because the iPad is particularly good at ignoring your hand resting on the screen. I’m not sure the Surface does that, and handwriting with a floating hand is exhausting. iPad won’t work for you if you need Photoshop, however.
 
DelActivisto said:
Instead, for that application, I'd recommend a dedicated writing pad. There are several innovative products on the market right now that you can write on with pens that come much closer to emulating an actual pen, and they then transfer to the words to a computer or word file for you.
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I've seen this - reMarkable - but it's way above my budget, and I've had feedback that the writing recognition needs work. I can stretch to a low-end Surface Pro as I could use it for Photoshop and other PC tasks too.

zmunkz said:
I agree with the above. I handwrite into Scrivener with my iPad pro + Apple pencil, but that only works because the iPad is particularly good at ignoring your hand resting on the screen. I’m not sure the Surface does that, and handwriting with a floating hand is exhausting. iPad won’t work for you if you need Photoshop, however.
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The Surface Pro ignores your hand if the pen is a certain height above the screen.

I'm wondering whether to wait a while longer for technology to improve, but I've already been considering a laptop for 4 or 5 years! I suppose at worst I could get a tablet-style device and add a keyboard if I don't enjoy the handwriting experience.
 
We always get second hand laptops - reconditioned corporate ones. A bit hit and miss as to whether you get a working battery, but they come in at £100 - £150. (We don't mind on battery as writing in the garden you can use an extension lead - not so helpful for backpacking.) Just a thought for you to add to your mill in terms of costing.
 
I found typing on the screen of an iPad to be pretty doable. Not good enough to keep me from buying the smart keyboard with my pro, though, which I find to be the best solution for me. I have the 9.7 inch pro, and I find it eminently portable. Black Friday deal from target last year really helped with price.
 
AlexH said:
I suppose at worst I could get a tablet-style device and add a keyboard if I don't enjoy the handwriting experience.
Click to expand...

That's almost certainly your best option. It's not ideal, because the keyboards are usually small, but much easier than hand-writing on a screen.

I've used a Nexus 7 and iPad Mini so far for my 'write while travelling' device, both with Bluetooth keyboards
 
AlexH said:
I've seen this - reMarkable - but it's way above my budget, and I've had feedback that the writing recognition needs work. I can stretch to a low-end Surface Pro as I could use it for Photoshop and other PC tasks too.
Click to expand...

I have a reMarkable (very early pre-order, which made the price a bit easier to stomach), and it is an absolute joy to use - the company have managed to get incredibly close to the feeling of writing on paper (the friction is less than a biro, though it's there, and you don't get the feeling of impressing on paper). Of course, it's a first market version of a first product from a startup, and it's not perfect -- my biggest criticism is that I sometimes get artefacts on my letters -- but all the issues are software, and as such can be improved with updates.

It's also very light on features, which I understand puts a lot of people off (you can write on it and not much else), but again, future updates can solve that, and the company are working on things like cloud storage integrations and some kind of OCR.

There are alternatives, but they're slower and more expensive (such as Sony's A4-sized eReader), or much cheaper and without any real features (such as the Boogie Board Sync - ~£150 if you can find one, no editing of pages, but does fulfill the role of a tablet you can write on and saved a page of notes digitally).

I've had feedback that the writing recognition needs work
Click to expand...

If you want OCR, the reMarkable has nothing. All you can do with the things you draw on the tablet is export them as an image or PDF - they stay handwritten.

In terms of recognising input, however, I think the reMarkable does incredibly well. The lag is imperceptible, and other than a few artefacts (as mentioned above), what appears on the tablet is what I've drawn.

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For just digitising text, have you considered a smart pen, or something like the Bamboo slate? Most work on standard paper, some have apps with OCR, and you can get them (Bamboo slate as well) for ~£100-150, which might leave enough for a laptop sans touchscreen for Photoshop.
 
|participated in Black Friday for the first time & bought V Microsoft Surface Pro. It didn't come with a pen so I'm currently writing with my finger. This is unedited. It seems to be doing okay considering I haven't had much practice! I think typing will always be quicker, but it's g good optoin if I don't have the keyboard attached. And oops, I did spell option wrongly just. I also spelt attached incorrectly, but that auto-corrected.

As you can see, the biggest issue it seems to be having is with individual a's.

(Edit - there's a "Get to know my handwriting" section, so maybe that'll fix the a's)
 
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I have to sign a screen every time my nurse comes. I'll pass on writing on a touchscreen, for now.
 
Cathbad said:
I have to sign a screen every time my nurse comes. I'll pass on writing on a touchscreen, for now.
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It's a million times better than those screens I sign on for deliveries. I didn't think I'd be impressed, but I am! I don't think it can ever beat touch-typing, though it should be well worth it when I get around to some photo-editing.
 
Not sure if this helps any, but I have a health condition that causes pain in my hands from find motor control skill activities, like typing or handwriting. I have found it tolerable to type on my iPhone 3 using the Notes app. It's not a great solution, but you can't get a screen any smaller than the iPhone 3's and it works out pretty well for me.
 
Voice dictation is sometimes a good option if your device offers it. I sometimes take rough notes on my iPhone that way. Editing is a no-no though.

Back in ye olden days (circa 2002-4) I used to have a PDA with a handwriting sort of shorthand called Graffiti that was amazing. I loved it. Just looked it up, seems like there might be an Android app version of it still (no good for you on Windows) - I'm going to go try it!
 
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